Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Wes Streeting(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
I congratulate all nominees and winners in the NHS parliamentary awards yesterday. Their success was richly deserved, and the awards were a very good example of the House coming together to celebrate those who work so hard in our health service and social care services.
In the past five weeks, I have asked the Secretary of State 29 questions at this Dispatch Box, yet he has managed to answer only one. For the rest, he has tried to bluster his way out of his policy decisions, as we have seen this morning. Let us try again. When will be the first week in which we see delivery of his promised 40,000 more appointments?
Wes Streeting
After the performances I had to put up with when the right hon. Lady was at the Government Dispatch Box, she has some brass neck complaining at the Opposition Dispatch Box that I am not answering her questions. She will know that we are working at pace to stand up 40,000 more appointments every week as our first step, as promised in our manifesto, and we will deliver. More than that, we will go into the next election with a record of which the right hon. Lady can only dream.
Victoria Atkins
After 14 years of opposition—two and a half of which the Secretary of State spent on the Front Bench and travelling around the world, funded by other Governments, to look at their healthcare systems—and more than 100 days in government, the right hon. Gentleman does not even know the start date of his own flagship policy. He is no Action Man; he is Anchorman.
Let us deal with Labour’s cruel decision to slash winter fuel payments, which will add pressure not only to patients, but to the NHS. The NHS’s deputy chief operating officer—
NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Wes Streeting(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Wes Streeting
The hon. Member’s point is taken.
The NHS stands at a fork in the road. There is a choice before us, and the parties represented in the House have different opinions on the best way forward. The first option is for the NHS to continue on its current path—to head down the road to ruin, on a mismanaged decline, with a status quo so poor that patients are forced to raid their savings to go private, and with the worst yet to come, because many Opposition Members believe that all patients should have to put their hands in their pockets when they fall ill. Reform UK has openly stated that it wants to change the funding model and replace it with an insurance-based system, and plenty in the Conservative party want to head in the same direction, chasing Reform UK down the hard-right rabbit hole.
Wes Streeting
The shadow Secretary of State says that it is nonsense. She is very upset about it, so let me point out to her that earlier this year, the Conservative former dentistry Minister, who served in her team, under her leadership, proposed a monthly £10 insurance fee to see a dentist. That is what the Conservatives were planning before the election. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member wants to intervene, I will give way.
Victoria Atkins
I will happily intervene. That is simply incorrect. There are a couple of points that the Secretary of State has made that are completely wrong, which I will have to correct in my speech. He is no longer in opposition. He needs to be careful what he says on the record. That is not right.
Victoria Atkins
I will help the hon. Gentleman, because I appreciate that he is new to this place. If he had been listening carefully to me, he would have heard that I am and have always been—in fairness, I hope the Health Secretary would acknowledge this as well—very open about the fact that the NHS needs reform. In fact, I said as Secretary of State that I wanted to reform our NHS to make it faster, simpler and fairer.
By the way, I speak with personal experience. I know there are some Members on the Back Benches who are new to this place and perhaps have not quite moved on from the natural competitiveness of a general election campaign, but I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of three. I have seen the very best of the NHS, but I have also seen some of its darkest corners. The NHS is genuinely one of the reasons why I came into politics, and one of the most damaging things about political discourse and the healthcare system in this country is when people seek to attribute to others a lack of care or commitment to our healthcare system, just because we have different ways of tackling these challenges and different solutions.
This is why—I will say this again, because I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman is listening—I will work constructively with him to improve the health service, but we have to do this on the facts. Some of the suggestions he made in the debate today and in his discourse during the general election campaign and so on are not accurate, and this is where I will pull him up. For example, he has not mentioned the introduction of Pharmacy First or the 160 community diagnostic centres. Just to help him, those were backed by the largest central cash investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in the history of the NHS. Those, as well as the new surgical hubs that we introduced, are not only putting healthcare into the community but, critically, helping to improve the numbers of chest checks and scans going through the system, which means speedier diagnosis.
Wes Streeting
The right hon. Lady mentions Pharmacy First. How many pharmacies went bust on her watch?
Victoria Atkins
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, because I imagine he will have got exactly the same briefing I used to get when I was in his shoes and being advised by exactly the same civil servants—and I am having to let this flow back into my memory here—the average person in England is within walking distance of their pharmacy. He will know that in many high streets in our market towns, as well as in London and other urban areas, there is a density of pharmacies. We want to support those pharmacies to ensure they are able to provide the services that they can provide, and in fairness, to enable pharmacists to work at the top of their licences. He supported Pharmacy First when I introduced it, so I am a little surprised that he appears to be casting doubt on it, but I am grateful for his intervention.
The next point is that our women’s health strategy—it does not have the attention from his ministerial team that it should have at the moment, and I hope that will improve over the coming months—is seeing the roll-out of women’s health hubs across England into every integrated care board area by the end of this year, ensuring that women’s health issues receive the attention they deserve.
Of course, there are parts of the NHS that need to change and do much better. The NHS needs to reform for the future of healthcare, and our focus must be on improving outcomes for patients, not protecting structures, bureaucracy and vested interests in the NHS. As I have said repeatedly, we will scrutinise constructively and support any meaningful efforts to reform the NHS to improve outcomes and experiences for patients, because we all want the NHS to thrive.
However, after nearly 100 days, there has not been anything yet for us to scrutinise or indeed support from this Government. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says he has just given me a list. Interestingly, I am pretty sure that three out of those four were started under my Government. [Interruption.] I am pretty sure that I was the Secretary of State who ordered the review of the Care Quality Commission, precisely because I was so concerned. He will be able to build on that report, and quite rightly so, but he should please be careful of his facts. Disappointingly, it is the right hon. Gentleman’s fondness for parties and concerts that has made the news recently, rather than his health policies. This Government need to sober up and start taking responsibility for their choices.
Victoria Atkins
I am going to make some progress.
One of the choices facing the Health Secretary is whether he will fight for the investment required from the Treasury to implement the productivity plan. At spring Budget, the Conservatives announced more than £3.4 billion of investment to upgrade IT systems, expand services on the NHS app and make better use of artificial intelligence, in order to reduce bureaucracy for staff and free up clinical time for doctors and nurses. Alongside the long-term workforce plan—the first ever in the history of the NHS—this plan will see productivity grow by 2% a year by the end of the decade and unlock £35 billion of savings, yet the productivity plan is not mentioned anywhere in this 163-page report.
This plan was made in partnership with NHS England and funded by the Conservative Government. While the right hon. Gentleman has talked a good game on productivity, we are still waiting for him to confirm his commitment to deliver the plan that was drawn up with NHS England to help improve productivity. I asked him three weeks ago whether he was cancelling this plan, and he failed to answer. I am very happy to give way now if he wants to commit to it. The whole NHS would like to know.
Wes Streeting
I am delighted that the shadow Secretary of State has so generously given way. I am not going to pre-empt the Chancellor’s announcements at the Budget and the spending review, but I say to her that the reason why so many of the things she said at this Dispatch Box as Secretary of State were a pile of nonsense is that they were plans built on a pillar of sand—a £22 billion black hole for which she and her party are yet to apologise. Will she do that now?
Victoria Atkins
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, calculations were made in the Treasury for this economic inheritance, but the Treasury cannot even explain how it has arrived at those calculations. If I were him, I would be a little bit careful of relying on that figure, because I fear it may trip up his Chancellor in due course. Perhaps the reason why he cannot answer the question about whether he is in fact committed to the productivity plan is that his friend the former Health Secretary, who has been walking in and out of the Department for Health with all of his private healthcare businesses, has not told him whether he plans to accept it, but we will find that out in due course.
The Secretary of State’s silence continues with new medicines, technology and trials. These will be at the forefront of the reforms needed in health services across the world, let alone the NHS, yet the Darzi report mentioned NICE only once in 163 pages. Even worse, I am hearing from the life sciences sector that he and his team are refusing to meet these businesses, putting at risk the hundreds of millions of pounds of investment that the Conservative Government secured, as well as the highly skilled jobs they provide and the life-enhancing treatments they promise our constituents. It is his responsibility to persuade the Chancellor to continue supporting and investing in this innovation for the future, because patients will not thank Labour if it refuses to engage in the medical revolution with these businesses.
Another choice that the right hon. Gentleman must make—we perhaps have a precursor of what he is going to say—concerns the workforce. We know that NHS staff are at the heart of our healthcare services, and that training, retaining and developing our workforce is critical to the future of the NHS. The Conservative Government created the first ever long-term workforce plan for the NHS—again, a plan that was asked for and welcomed by the whole NHS, and developed hand in hand with NHS England to train the doctors, nurses, midwives and other healthcare staff that we need now and in the future. The plan was described by NHS England’s chief executive as
“one of the most seminal moments in our 75-year history.”
Crikey, even the right hon. Gentleman supported it. Yet this supposedly independent investigation failed to mention the plan once. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that this Government stand by this plan and will fund it as the Conservatives would do? [Interruption.] He says that he talked about it, but he did not give an answer, because his job is to ask the Chancellor for this funding—has he done so?
Victoria Atkins
Right, okay. We have that on the record now and we will wait to see what happens at the Budget.
It is also striking that the report mentions pay and wages only twice in 163 pages, despite the fact that staff costs account for 65% of provider operating costs a year. If the report and the Secretary of State do not acknowledge the single biggest cost pressure for providers, how can they claim to have the answers on reform? He claims to have sorted out industrial action in the NHS, and I must again correct him on something. He keeps referencing when I last had a conversation with the junior doctors committee, as it then was. What he neglects to tell us is that we entered mediation with junior doctors in May—he never thinks to mention that when he is holding forth at the Dispatch Box.
NHS: Independent Investigation
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Wes Streeting(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of his statement.
The NHS belongs to us all, and we all care about it, so let us stop the political posturing and talk constructively about its future. We all know that our healthcare system faces significant pressures, as do all health systems around the world. We are living longer, and with multiple and complex conditions. We have wider societal pressures, such as the impact of social media on the development of some young minds, as well as the cost pressures of miracle drugs developed by our world-class life sciences sector for their treatment benefits, and the shock of the pandemic has had catastrophic impacts on the NHS and its productivity.
I believe there is much to be proud of in the NHS. Its dedicated staff look after 1.6 million people a day— 25% more people than in 2010. It has more doctors, more nurses and more investment that at any point in its history. It is delivering tens of millions more out-patient appointments, diagnostic tests and procedures for patients than in 2010, and we delivered the fastest roll-out of vaccinations for covid in the world, freeing our society more quickly than other countries. We have more healthcare in the community, with the opening of 160 community diagnostic centres—the largest central cash investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in the history of the NHS—and 15 new surgical hubs; and the launch of Pharmacy First, helping to free up 10 million GP appointments for those living with more complex conditions. [Interruption.] I say to the Secretary of State that I paid him the courtesy of listening to him in silence, so I hope he will do the same for me.
Victoria Atkins
The right hon. Gentleman was chuntering from a sedentary position. We on the—[Interruption.]
Government Policy on Health
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Wes Streeting(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Victoria Atkins
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on the involvement of people with no formal appointment in the development of Government policy on health.
I apologise to the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am more used to answering, but believe you me, I am looking forward to the questions.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
And I am committed to making sure that the right hon. Lady is there, asking the questions, for a very, very long time.
Unlike our predecessors, this Government cannot get enough of experts. We work with a wide range of stakeholders in developing policy, because that goes to the heart of our approach to mission-driven government. But I think the shadow Secretary of State was referring specifically to the right honourable Alan Milburn, so let me address him specifically. I walked into the Department of Health and Social Care on 5 July to be confronted with the worst crisis in the history of the national health service: waiting lists at 7.6 million, more than a million patients a month waiting four weeks for a GP appointment —if they could get one at all—the junior doctors still in dispute and on strike, and dental deserts across huge parts of our country, where people cannot get an NHS dentist for love nor money.
This Government are honest about the scale of the crisis and serious about fixing it, which means that we need the best available advice—it is all hands on deck to fix the mess that the previous Government left. If a single patient waited longer for treatment than they needed because I had failed to ask for the most expert advice around, I would consider that a betrayal of patients’ interests. I decide whom I hear from in meetings, I decide whose advice I seek, and I decide what to share with them. I also welcome challenge, alternative perspectives and experience.
The right honourable Alan Milburn is a former Member of this House, a member of the Privy Council and a former Health Secretary. He does not have a pass to the Department and, at every departmental meeting he has attended, he has been present at the request of Ministers. During Alan’s time in office, he gave patients the choice over where they are treated and who treats them, as well as making sure that the NHS was properly transparent, so that all patients were able to make an informed choice—a basic right that we expect in all other walks of life, but which only the wealthy and well connected were able to exercise in healthcare until Alan changed it. He gave patients access to the fastest, most effective treatment available on NHS terms, so that faster treatment was no longer just for those who could afford private healthcare. He made the tough reforms that drove better performance across the NHS and, along with every other Labour Health Secretary, delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS. That is his record and Labour’s record, and it is the kind of experience that I want around the table as we write the reform agenda that will lift the NHS out of the worst crisis in its history, get it back on its feet, and make it fit for the future once again.
Victoria Atkins
I fear that the right hon. Gentleman is betraying his inexperience. It is a shame that he needs all that help and experience; the rest of us have just got on with the job.
The Department of Health and Social Care manages incredibly sensitive information, ranging from the development of healthcare policy to the handling of market-sensitive information concerning vaccines and medication, and the rules regarding patient confidentiality. It has emerged that Mr Milburn, a former Labour politician, has received more than £8 million from his personal consultancy firm since 2016. He advises one of the largest providers of residential care for older people, and is apparently a senior adviser on health for a major consultancy firm. [Interruption.] A Member sitting opposite says, “So what?” Given the risk of conflicts of interest—that, rather than the right hon. Gentleman’s inexperience, is the point of this UQ—has Mr Milburn declared his business interests to the Department? Can the right hon. Gentleman reassure the House on how such conflicts are being managed, so that we can get a sense of the scale of this open-door policy and Mr Milburn’s access?
Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many meetings Mr Milburn has attended? How many were with NHS England? How many were conducted without ministerial presence? What sensitive information has Mr Milburn been given access to? Does it include information concerning the sale of patient information to pharmaceutical companies? Has Mr Milburn seen internal DHSC or NHSE documents regarding the pricing of medicines and vaccinations, and other market-sensitive information? This is all information that comes across the right hon. Gentleman’s desk, and there is no formal record for understanding what Mr Milburn has seen.
If the right hon. Gentleman uses, as he has done just now, the excuse that this is all okay because Mr Milburn is a former Secretary of State and a Privy Counsellor, could the right hon. Gentleman set out where in the ministerial code or the civil service code such an exemption exists for unrecorded access to information by members of the public? I hope the Secretary of State will also confirm his lists of other advisers, their commercial interests and any other members of the public attending meetings that are of a deeply sensitive nature, so that we get a sense of just how far this goes.
This is just more evidence of cronyism at the heart of this new Labour Government. Following recent press reports that a Labour party worker had been parachuted into a civil service role in the Department through a closed recruitment process, will the Secretary of State finally come clean to the House and be transparent about who is running his Department and shaping policy for him?
Wes Streeting
The right hon. Lady wants to compare experience. It took me three weeks to agree a deal with junior doctors—she had not even met them since March—and in the two and a half years that I was the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, she was the fifth and among the worst. Does it not just tell us everything we need to know about the Conservatives’ priorities? She does not ask me what we are doing to cut waiting lists. She does not ask about the action we took to end strikes. She does not ask about the action that has been taken to hire a thousand GPs, who she left to graduate into unemployment. She has not asked me about the news on the front page of The Daily Telegraph that, on their watch, 50 years of health progress is in decline. And funnily enough, there was nothing on the news from The Observer this weekend that the NHS was hit harder than any other health service by the pandemic because it was uniquely exposed by a decade of Conservative neglect. Having broken the NHS, all they are interested in now is trying to tie this Government’s hands behand our back to stop us cleaning up their mess.
What the right hon. Lady is implying in this question is that, as Health Secretary, she never sought the advice of people who did not work in her Department, which would explain quite a lot actually. I feel sorry for her, because when I need advice, I can call on any number of Labour Health Secretaries who helped deliver the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. But she never had that luxury, because every single one of her Conservative predecessors left NHS waiting lists higher than where they found them—except, of course, for Thérèse Coffey, who was outlasted by a lettuce.
In fact, it says a lot about the modern Conservative party’s anti-reform instincts that the right hon. Lady is so opposed to Alan Milburn. They used to hug him close when they were cosplaying as new Labour. Andrew Lansley even asked whether Alan Milburn would chair the new clinical commissioning board that his top-down reorganisation created, although Alan sensibly turned him down and labelled the reorganisation “the biggest car crash” in the history of the NHS, which just goes to prove that Alan Milburn has sound judgment and is worth listening to.
But if the right hon. Lady wants to lead with her chin and talk cronyism, let us talk cronyism. Why do we not talk about Owen Paterson lobbying Health Ministers on behalf of Randox? The Conservatives care so much about cronyism that they welcomed Lord Cameron back with open arms following his paid lobbying for Greensill. For reasons of ongoing court cases, let us not even get into Baroness Mone and the £200 million contract for personal protective equipment. Where was the right hon. Lady during those sorry episodes? Cheering on that Government and presiding over a record of abysmal failure that has put them on the other side of the Chamber.
This Government are having to rebuild not only the public services that the Conservatives broke and the public finances they raided, but the trust in politics that they destroyed. We will put politics back into the service of working people and rebuild all three. Clearly, we will have to do it without the support of the Conservative party’s one- nation tradition, who are not even running and have abandoned their flag. It is clear that the Conservatives have not learned a thing from the defeat they were subjected to on 4 July, and we will get on with the business of clearing up their mess.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Wes Streeting(5 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
May I welcome the Secretary of State and his ministerial team to their places, and wish them well in their endeavours? With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I should also place on the record my thanks to my superb team of former Ministers, to those in the private office and to officials in the Department for their hard work and support, as well as thanking the doctors, nurses and social care and health professionals with whom I have had the pleasure of working.
Now, to business. In opposition, the Secretary of State described the 35% pay rise demand by the junior doctors committee as “reasonable’. What he did not tell the public was that this single trade union demand would cost an additional £3 billion, let alone the impact on other public sector workers. Will he ask the Chancellor to raise taxes, or will she ask him to cut patient services to pay for it?
Wes Streeting
May I welcome the shadow Secretary of State to her new position? She has behaved in her typically graceful and decent way. I enjoyed working with her on that basis, and will continue to do so. Although, I must confess that when I heard about the “abominable” behaviour of the shadow Health Secretary, I thought, “What on earth have I done now?” Then I remembered that our roles have swapped, and that it was not me they were referring to.
What I said was that the doctors were making a reasonable case that their pay had not kept in line with inflation, but we were clear before the election that 35% was not a figure we could afford. We are negotiating with junior doctors in good faith to agree on a settlement that we can deliver and that the country can afford.
Victoria Atkins
I am afraid I do not like it when Secretaries of State do not answer questions, and I am sorry to say that the right hon. Gentleman gave another non-answer, as has been the case for those on the Government Front Bench. I have a question that I hope he will be able to answer. The final act of the Conservative Government was to protect children and young people by banning private clinics from selling puberty blockers to young people questioning their gender. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he will resist the voices of opposition on the Benches behind him and implement in full all of Dr Cass’s recommendations, including exercising “extreme caution”, as she said, in the use of cross-sex hormones in young people? They and their parents deserve certainty from this Government.
Wes Streeting
Obviously, there is a judicial review of the former Secretary of State’s decision, which I am defending. The matter is sub judice, so I will steer clear of it.
To go back to first principles, we are wholeheartedly committed to the full implementation of the Cass review, which will deliver material improvements in the wellbeing, safety and dignity of trans people of all ages. I think that is important. I want to reassure LGBT+ communities across the country, particularly the trans community, that this Government seek a very different relationship with them. I look at the rising hate crime statistics and trans people’s struggles to access healthcare, and I look at their desire to live freely, equally and with dignity. That is what we will work with them to deliver.